By this time, we all know Ubi sucks at making Heroes titles, and they don't seem to have improved at all. Not only did they basically not support H7, they dropped the ball completely and blamed the fans. But they are still not selling the IP (probably just want to cash in on "Mobile games"...)
Erwan and his apologists constantly were saying "Oh, so you could do better?". We (well, not me, but others - I mod H4 ) showed with mods that we could, like the Ashcan to the Trashcan edition. But this is not enough to fix a broken base game...
As a community, we have the resources to make something from the beginning. Modders, programmers, AI makers, designers, artists, modellers... to make ourt own dreamed M&M Heroes (Or "Heroes of Might and Magic" ) title. Who is more knowleadgeable than us to do it?

The engine is the hard part, but we could use a free engine or even a paid one if we buy a license (Unreal Engine 4 is open source, for example... there is also Unity and whatnot).

As for intellectual property, if we don't make money out of it and don't use outyside assets, they cannot sue for anything.

On other side, there is another possibility: We make an IndieGoGo campaign and only place it as "Community-Made, HOMM-Inspired" but not use any of the intellectual property or copyright (For example, calling it "Fight and Sorcery = Heroes &#8734;").
Of course, we would not use anything Ashan... not only because many people do not like it, but rather to avoid problems with Ubi and the like.

We can even not use Enroth or Axeoth. The story and background is nice, but it's not primarily why we play heroes; rather, the mechanics is, and we can make our own stories nonetheless. Most of the Heroes things we love is generic fantasy and thus not copyrightable... Griffins, Minotaurs, Black Dragons, Dwarves, Elves, Beholders. Warlocks, witches, warriors, priests, magicians... the practical totality of Heroes creatures, classes and spells are all historical-mythological and exempt of property or copyright. We can use what we like from an endless pool of possibilities;
It's not like we are making "Pandaren" and being sued by World of Warcraft. Even the name Heroes can't be copyrighted and many games use it (that's why Ubi switched to the "Might and Magic" wording). This is a gigantic strong suite that Heroes remaking has to set it apart from nearly any other game; we don't need to use IP (intellectual property) from Ubi or any other company to make a faithful Heroes game, either in gameplay or in look and feel. It's a philosophy, not a name or trademark, that makes it what it is.

If we do the IndieGogo thing, we can even buy rigged models cheap from the internet with full license. Not only that but we can also use free models from countless sources, including games released under GNU or other licenses (Such as Cube 2 and Red Eclipse).

That's assuming we want 3D, which could have a "fixed perspective mode", even be locked in isometric render mode if we want to. Render engine and settings could be tweaked to give images a pictoric quality.
The other option is high-res sprites for a completely 2D game, but that's both harder and less appealing to the public.

Of course I am not suitable as "project leader" because I don't have enough community prestige to do it. But forming a "council" from the best and more prestigious and knowledgeable should not be that hard, and most things could be decided by the way of polls (not stupid things such as "faction lineups" in a rigged stand like Ubi did, but important things such as the ways of hero progression, present resources, what features take priority, and so on).

OF course, not everyone will be pleased at all times because the community is not homogeneous. But we already have 5 different heroes games to enjoy and two to cringe to... we are not losing them by making a new one.

My idea would be to make the new game multiplayer-focused as the last trainwrecks were all campaign-focused. If we have a good and stable multiplayer game and a working editor, then people themselves can create as many good campaigns and story maps as they want - it's not even necessary to have "pre-shipped" campaigns which would delay the development process and enslave the game to their mechanics ("campaign balance" that Ubi did more than once is an aberration to good design. Games should be balanced for multiplayer, and fighting AIs on skrimish; campaigns come later when the basics are already laid out).

I know the proyect is ambitious - Ambition is everything when you want achievement. If you aim low, you sure aren't firing far. And it's better to have ambition than nothing. As it stands, the M&M franchise seems to be dead. Only we can breathe life back to it.

What say you?
How would you like it?
What would be the best engine? Ideas? Resources? Project leaders?
How to present a donation campaign and manage it?
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Yes, beholders were originally, but they were already used in other settings... Heroes III has Beholders by name :v (unupgraded Evil Eyes). But, you can just call them "Evil Eye" anyways I guess : P

Combat and campaign map are managed by two sections of the same engine... has always been as far as I know. If it would be two different engines, data transmission would be hard and compatibility problems would easily arise (dead creatures, spells, experience, mana, etc. has to carry from combat to adventure and vice versa). But yes, the two sections of the engine need different kinds of programming to work together, of course.

I am no programmer either, but I can do some "drudge work" such as coding (which is not the same as programming), help with balance and playtesting, 2D graphical design, etc.
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Though let me be honest, I would only be really useful for the creative part, such as writing lore and making concept art. I would admit I might not be the best at the art department, I can fairly quickly, depending on my fickleness at the given moment, create original drawings for more or less everything.
And I can help with making concepts for units, lineups and factions.

Also, an original name I've had in mind if such a project ever should arise is "Lords and Heroes"

This is not serious. You will end with tons of "knowledgeable" people offering this:

Mediczero said:
Though let me be honest, I would only be really useful for the creative part, such as writing lore and making concept art. I would admit I might not be the best at the art department, I can fairly quickly, depending on my fickleness at the given moment, create original drawings for more or less everything. And I can help with making concepts for units, lineups and factions.

MattII said:
And I'd like to help, but I'm afraid I'm not much good at either programming or graphics, so I can really only provide ideas.

but no one capable to materialize that. Making concepts isn't hard -we have billions of such speculations through forums, designing and technically completing games from scratch, no one in this forum proved he is able to, yet.

Mediczero said:Rather than being pessimistic about it, it would be better to figure out what roles that needs to be filled and find somebody to fill them.

Well you need a bunch of programmers, another bunch of graphical artists, many testers, for a bare minimum. All skilled with sufficient gear and willing to work for free.

Does it have to be graphics from tomorrow?
I mean, there have, if I am not confusing things right now, some releases of games in the last years, who got the 2D style.

I prefer 3D, I am honest on that one but if a good game has 2D, if the charm of the game lies partly within the 2D, then I would give it a try as well.
I do also tend to very old 3D games from time to time and sometimes I grab my red edition from pokemon and make another round.

There are also some endinges for 3D, who seems not to be having used in years, like the one if Disciple 3, which I very like but the style of heroes 5 alpha has also something, that seems likeable on the first sight to me. Maybe an old 3D can be used for free by now?

What I want ot say is, does it make things easier or more complicated, in terms of what Galaad said, if the first game of this series, completly made by fans, uses a old 3D or even a 2D style. Or does it change nothing?

Galaad said:Well you need a bunch of programmers, another bunch of graphical artists, many testers, for a bare minimum. All skilled with sufficient gear and willing to work for free.

You make it sound like we are going to make an epic, fully 3D, with the most modern of modern graphics game. Rather, it would more likely be a kind of 2D (like H1 & H2), almost indie game of sorts.
While yes, we would primarily lack programmers and graphic designers, they should be possible to find. Hell, I'll even dedicate my time to learn how to make spriteart if needed. And things like testers and mapmakers shouldn't be hard to come by.

Bless your good heart, but I'm sceptic of this ever being done. Best thing we can hope of is a Kickstarter campaign to buy the IP and give it back to JVC.

Easiest way of doing this for now is probably finding some easily modable similar game and do a HoMM mod for it, like the terrific Civ3 mod from many years ago. AOW is probably our best bet (despite that I'm not a big fan of its 3D graphics). We could also make mods set in Axeoth or Antagarich for other, non TBS-games, to keep the lore and spirit of the series alive.

As for graphics, isometric 3D (like H4) is the way to go. Just look at the gorgeous graphics for Tyranny that came out last year: http://assets.rpgsite.net/images/images/000/050/297/original/TYRANNY_BV_40.png
____________Ank's Old School (kinda) H8 proposal<- best thing evvah, trust me

The community has been expecting "Good might and magic games" just by !"hoping" that corporate developers do it for tens of years.

And I tell you, it's not going to happen. The corporate world has moved on. Nobody cares for turn-based strategy any more. As for JVC? he has my respect as a gameplay designer, but his company uses the same business model than others. The Creature Quest is nice, sure, it is not badly designed... but business model is based on pay-to-win microtransactions that cost hundreds of dollars for fictitious currency. Do we want something like this for an Heroes game!? And don't forget he reccomended and approved h6 AND 7...

He said himself in 2016 interview he wants to do "his version" of H5 like an always-online MMORPG. Now, this may be a good game. But would it be an Heroes game? I woudn't call it that...

The IP is not going to be sold by less than many millions dollars; and even if it's sold, its unlikely to make again games like the ones we want to play and made the franchise great.
In comparison, creating a new indie game costs from hundreds of thousands to less than ten thousands to zero dollars.

I know people that, as single developers, make games from scratch. Even 3D games. Granted, most of these are mobile games. Others are flash games. But hobbysts do games from zero many time, Even for non-profit. Sites like Newgrounds have thousands of user-created free flash games.

Other sites like ModDB have total conversion mods of 3D games with completely new assets and gameplay, made by far less people than we have here.

And Heroes 5.5 has Quantomas AI which is possibly one of the top of the world for this type of game, and he did it completely for free...

Not to mention WoG, HotA, and many other huge and well developed mods, maps, and so on, equivalent to tens of thousands of hours of work, much more than it ever took to create the original Heroes 3 or 4.

Basically, making a Heroes game with an existing engine is no different than making a mod. There should be free or cheap enough game engines that we can use for it. Even we could buy Black Hole engine from HVI devs to debug and replace the graphics and gameplay, if it comes to that. It is even an option to buy Nival's engine for H5...

Unity Game Engine and Unreal Engine 4 are also available; we don't have to make a dedicated engine from scratch.
Unity Personal is free, can use 2D as well as 3D, and can be used for up to 25 multi-platform ( https://unity3d.com/ ). Unreal Engine 4 is also completely free and full for non-commercial. ( https://www.unrealengine.com/what-is-unreal-engine-4 ) See that independent developers are already using it to creatwe many different games: http://www.indiedb.com/engines/unreal-engine-4/games ; over a thousand projects actually.

If we can't get high programmers to work for free, surely we can pay some of them with an IndieGoGo campaign... Yes, making this game isn't "easy"; but it's still more realistic than just waiting "Next Ubi game will be great, I promise!" for more than a decade...____________
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I will apply to be the ******* "fan" who complains whenever I disagree with things or when things go wrong, and take the team to task for any unprofessional statements or behaviour using kindergarten level jokes and jibes lol

this is an essential role dontchaknow it worked very well to ensure Heroes 6 and 7 are great games for the ages lol
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We've had quite a few Heroes fan projects over the years, not even one came to fruition. Daydreaming is okay, just don't let it get pathological. But word of advice, make a prototype for playtesters and I'm sure you'll get more involvement for the end product, at this point words don't cut it anymore (not for me at least).
____________Guide to a Great Heroes GameThe Young Traveler